


Homemade pickles

by marieincolour



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, Epilepsy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:56:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys settle down. Dean takes up gardening. Sam.. Doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homemade pickles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [summer themed Dean H/C comment meme.](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html) Prompt can be found [here](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html?thread=9362465#t9362465).
> 
> I don't own Supernatural. I'm merely borrowing the characters, and I'm most certainly not making any money on this.

  
_________  
  
 **Homemade Pickles**  
  
It's one of those communities where people all say they're from the same place or the same area, but you need a bike or a car to fetch your paper. There are three other houses around, all scattered like forgotten hay balls over an area flatter than the soles of Sam's sneakers.

  
Dean thinks their house is the nicest one. Not because it's the biggest – it's not, by far. Or the prettiest – that'd be old mrs. Turner with the frilly railings and rose bushes. Mostly because when he sees it, growing out of the horizon like a bean stalk, he can feel the tense muscles of his neck uncoil. Slowly. Gently. 

  
To anyone but him (and possibly Sam) it's a disaster of a house. It was once painted blue. Or purple. A bit of white, and there's a wall with nothing at all. There's a little shed in the garden, and it's red with white edges, and one day they think they'll paint the whole house like that. But not yet.

The fences are halfway falling down, only held up by love and plenty of wire, and the grass between the stones paving their driveway grows longer than the grass of their lawn, because Sam always forgets to cut it.

Always.

  
The kitchen is toasty warm in the winter and freezing cold in the summer, thanks to poor insulation down to the basement and an energetic set of heaters in the winter. The bathroom clunks and whines, every single faucet in the house drips in a different pace (until they all synchronize for one little 'plunk', and then go off again).

  
Dean's work, the wood fresh and light, is scattered all over the house. In the floors, the roofs, the walls, the furniture. Everywhere. Like little fingerprints. Sam leaves his own. Cleaning agent residue. The smell of fabric softener in the bedroom where they dry their clothes, the undisturbed dust on the furniture (because Sam hates dusting and Dean doesn't give a shit).

  
Sam rocks the lawn mower. Dean rocks the bare feet and shovel. The first carrots he grew were long and thin like fat orange hairs dipped in candle wax, but this year he expects they'll be healthy and happy, like their peas and their beans.

He's out there every morning, long before Sam can disappear to town to work. His hands, once rough from handling guns and knives are perpetually dirty, like the soil has long since grown into his skin.

It doesn't come off no matter how hard he scrubs. But then, Sam thinks, it shouldn't. Not with the kind of tenacity he goes at the gardens. He made fun of Dean once. Felt immediately bad for mocking his brother for adjusting. Turning things around so thoroughly. Dean served him homemade pickles, and he hasn't laughed since.

He still doesn't help out.

  
Their neighbors are a bit full of themselves. The Thompson's up the street claim to grow the best crops in the county, but Sam knows for a fact that title belongs to Dean, who keeps their pantry full of potatoes and onions, and who hangs dried herbs from the rafter in the kitchen roof. Sam walks into the tarragon on his way to the bathroom.  _Every time._

Dean likes the Douglas kid. The youngest one, with the dark brown bowl hair cut and the uncommonly broad shoulders for a boy his age. Sam knows the Douglas' have their kids working around their farm. Can see the two oldest roughing up the youngest one now and again through the window in the bedroom he's claimed as his office. The one that once upon a time belonged to a maid, and is so small he can't turn sideways at his desk.

  
He can see him now, standing in his too small jeans with the too large sneakers out in the garden patch Dean's closed off with barriers made of twine and love, tip-toeing down narrow paths between busy piles of earth. Tomatoes, beans.

“D'ya need any help today, Dean?”

Dean looks up, squinting one eye against the sunshine pouring down on them, shakes his head.

“You can water the tomatoes if you feel like it, Joey. Thanks.”

HIs eyes flutter for a moment after he's finished speaking, blinking rapidly until they settle. Joey waits, knows Dean will come out of it quickly. This happens every couple of sentences, even ofter if Dean's tired or stressed. Joey sometimes wonders if he'll notice anything happened at all if he doesn't move. If he stays perfectly still until Dean focuses his gaze on him again.

Then he scurries away with the bucket, somehow lighter on foot now he's doing work he doesn't have to. Dean strokes one dirty finger down the length of a sweet pea.

  
“What's this?” Joey asks, his finger pointing straight into the ugly plant of a potato.

“It's a potato. You know what that is, right?”

While the Douglas family run a farm, they don't grow anything for themselves. Which is a pity, Dean thinks, because potatoes make themselves, pretty much. He just pours some water over them from time to time.

Joey raises an eyebrow at him, and then grins. “Those are the ones you fry, right?”

Dean prefers his boiled with a bit of butter and salt, but whatever. Mostly because he grew them himself, and that just makes them taste  _so_  much better all on their own.

  
It's like this almost every day right now. Sam is off on holiday, but spends his time holed up in his “office” (Dean calls it the closet, and remains faithful to the belief that Sam will one day come out of it). Dean digs and pulls out weeds, waters and fondles and harvests, and Joey helps with an endless array of questions.

“But what if there  _were_  snails in your garden. What would they eat first?”

And Dean nods. Nods and shrugs and throws out sarcastic comments with a soft voice, because Joey is broad shouldered and quiet, but his dark brown eyes are trusting and happy when they're in the tiny, messy little garden. And Dean misses that a lot, even if he's not quite ready to trade the shovels for baseball gloves just yet.

  
Sam types. Writes. Rarely comes outside unless it's to drive the riding lawn mower needed to take care of the meadows running down from their house, but tans enough during those short minutes that he looks like he spends his life on the beach. Dean tans slowly, unevenly. Freckled and patchy, mostly just varying shades of red and pink. He takes to wearing a straw hat to keep himself safe from the unrelenting sunshine. Sam watches him drinking water on the back porch, pouring water over his head and wishes he'd chew a straw to finish the picture off. Goes back to his office work, feels happy enough with it.

Sam likes to be clean.

Joey helps out. Sometimes doesn't help, sometimes just chats. Stays afterwards for when Sam reads in the living room and Dean bitches about TV and triggers. Sam doesn't mind, and Dean has someone new to play cards with. They end up in endless rounds of Gin Rummy until Sam runs both Joey and his bike home in his dingy, beat up pick up truck.

  
Dean thinks they're kinda happy here, in a house with more personality than brains and a garden full of vegetables and berries. A basement half full of empty glass jars, half full of freshly filled glass jars. He keeps track of the days easier like this, has a firmer hold on reality.

  
It's all fine until one August afternoon. For a long time, all Sam can hear is the clacking of his fingers on the keyboard and the happy chatter of the kid in the garden. Sometimes a bark of laughter too deep to belong to Joey, surely coming from Dean.

Around four, there's a shout. Sam knows what's up long before he's reached the window, one elbow scraping painfully along the wall between the chair and the plaster. There's a little gathering of glass bottles on the kitchen counter downstairs, and for the moment, while Dean foams at the mouth and convulses against damp soil, he hates himself for letting his brother imbibe.  _Letting._ Like Dean ever asks permission.

And sure enough, Dean's got himself wedged deep between the tomato plants, his head twisted backwards. Joey's kneeling next to him, looking focused and determined, though there isn't really anything to do at this point but wait it out.  
Sam does it with him, kneeling with clean jeans in the recently watered soil, the knees absorbing everything they can.

  
“Is Dean okay?” Joey asks, and Sam nods as he pulls him upright, still confused and blinking sleepily.

“He'll be fine, he just needs to sleep” he says, like he did last time. And the time before.

“D'you want me to keep watering the plants?”

  
There's a tin bucket tipped over next to where Joey's been kneeling, and Sam looks at the tiny bit of water that didn't escape. Looks at the dry soil around the plants in neat rows around them, calling for moisture.

  
When Dean wakes up almost three hours later his mouth is sticky and carries the irony taste of blood. His tongue is sore somewhere towards the front, a little piece of it skinned open against his tooth. It'll heal quickly. He toys with it against his teeth anyway, pulls himself into a sitting position against groaning muscles that don't appreciate the abuse he puts them through, however involuntary it might be. The new shots the doctor prescribed helps the intensity of the seizures, but he still feels like shit afterwards. Like a wrung out dishcloth. He smells like one, too.

He's halfway to his feet, one hand trembling against the metal head of the daybed they've got in use as a second couch in the living room when he hears voices outside, and the confusion at being left alone to wake up lifts suddenly. Right outside their living room window he can see two silhouettes, dark against an orange sky. One is carrying a bucket. It's not a tall figure, not strong. He struggles with the bucket, leans almost double over to the side to carry it along, and the other (taller) figure leans against a shovel buried deep in the earth. The wheelbarrow looks full from where Dean's standing, and he frowns. There wasn't any weeding left to be done today, last he checked. If it's still the day he thinks it is. He wonders which of his creations are buried under the soil in it, doomed to end up in the compost heap at the far end of the garden, behind the little shed where the Impala stands protected under a triple tarp.

  
He stretches his back, hears his back pop and creak as every joint snaps itself into position. Yawns uncontrollably and finds he doesn't mind so much if Sam did away with some of his tomato plants. He's got a pantry full of homemade ketchup already.

  
Outside, Sam weeds lettuce with the sleeves of his neat office shirt folded up, a smudge of dirt on his cheekbone and sweat gathering along his hairline. For a guy who claims to hate gardening he sure does make an effort, Dean thinks, hobbling in the general direction of their shower.


End file.
